Wednesday, June 25, 2014

It's Baaaaack: The Domino Theory And Iraq/Syria

First Appeared in DelawareLiberal on 6/25/2014 by ProgressivePopulist
I've lived long enough to see now three iterations of the old Domino
Theory; it goes something like...if we allow a country to fall, it will
spiral into a cascade of other nearby countries to follow suit and be
taken over by nefarious forces.

I saw in the 50's the Korean War
fought to a stalemate because of hysteria over the communists taking
over all of Asia. Then in the 60's there was Vietnam, with the so
called communist threat taking over southeast Asia. Communism was our
supposed external threat to "our way of life".

Now, after about 40
years, were we've seen much of communism morph into a kind of hybrid
capitalistic/communistic economic system in Russia and China and much of
the rest of the previously dreaded communist world.

Now, thanks
to the lemmings in the lemmingstream media, the new fear mongering
external threat to "our way of life" is the radical Muslim Caliphate.
Reappearing on all of the networks and the op-ed pages of much of the
corporate media is the current generation of neo-con and neo-liberal
communism fighters who took on the socialist tyrant Sadaam. They're now
focusing on the Muslim Caliphate threat.

Their solution, with a
stunning history of previous failure, continues to be military
intervention to stop the threat in its march to destroy "our way of
life". Little discussion from this hysterical right wing crowd seems to
focus on the "way of life" of the people immediately impacted by the
Jihadists in their direct path.

Cheney, their prime prophet and
utterly discredited spokesperson, given tons of air time and print
space, now is predicting that we face another attack from the radical
Muslims in this decade, far worse than 9-11. I think this is his way
of further deflecting scrutiny of his administration's malfeasance in
responding to the warnings he and his partners in crime ignored in the
days just prior to the 9-11 attacks.

Now this is not to discount
the seriousness of the collapse of any kind of political moderation or
modernization throughout the middle east. Yes, I must admit, it looks
now quite like a short stack of domino's falling; at least a couple.
Maybe not the whole set though. Indeed, these crazies warrant very
close scrutiny and reasonable preparations for calamaties they might
wreak on the international order and other sovereign states. The
crazies I refer to are both the neo-con crowd and the Jihadists, both
equally as potentially destructive of the world order.

I think
this Administration has a pretty good handle on the problem and
solutions, such as they might exist. One of the solutions might well be
to let it play out in that region, exercising diplomacy and providing
humanitarian aid while maintain a vigilant watch for actual threats to
our sovereign territories. In playing observer rather than manipulator,
the U.S. could well come out of this with two new allies to suppress
terrorism from the lunatics; Iran and the Kurds. Turkey continues to
want to join the EU and align with the west.

And, ironically, it
has long been the goal of some of the neo-con crowd to diminish the
threat they see from the middle east through fragmentation of Arab
national identities. Well, it appears their wish may be granted.

Our
first order of business should be our own order of business. Our
domestic arena, including fixing what's broken in both our economic and
political systems. There's no better defense against outside intruders
in the order of things than a satisfied and happy citizenry. We don't
have that in place, do we? This of course includes assuring our people
that they are being protected from threatening intruders as well as is
possible and replacing such things as energy sources from that region
with our own sustainable resources.

The radical Muslim crowd would
not be having the success they appear to currently enjoy if the
populace were feeling well served by their leaders and government in the
region they are currently tearing up. Not much popular resistance to
these intruder havoc makers in either Syria or now Iraq, is there?
The same is true in Somalia and Yemen as well as places in Africa like
Nigeria.

Stepping back for a minute, though, this regional crisis
pales by comparison to the destruction of life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness the global climate and environmental crises threaten if we
don't act now, immediately. But, I digress.

To be successful and
earn popular support, a Caliphate will take many decades to consolidate
power and succeed at governing. That is to our benefit because their
leaders will have to focus internally. We can keep an eye on the
crazies in their midst to protect ourselves. Popular support will be
very difficult to earn from those they newly govern. Isn't it true also
that many in our own midst support theocracies? Wasn't Israel founded
as a sort of democratic theocracy? I'm not a believer and find
theocratic states appalling but look around. They're quite popular. We
even recognize the theocratic state of the Vatican. So, what's the big
deal here?

The region will still be fragmented with family,
tribal and religious differences. So, the vision of some monolithic
enemy toppling the Domino stack in the region I think is unrealistic.
The messiness of the region will continue to trouble us and we will
continue having great difficulty understanding Arab culture. This
factor alone ought to give us great caution in trying to engineer
events, let alone engage in guerrilla warfare with our mostly
conventional military machine.

Let's focus our energies on our own domestic Domino game and maybe we might someday again be the envy of the world.

About Me

Moved to Wilmington, Delaware in mid-2013. Resided in Houston, Texas for 45 years. A widower, married Julie Jackson in 2007. Retired as a hospital marketing consultant in 2001.Have been a Democratic Party political activist for most of my adult life, organizing and mobilizing for the Party and its candidates. Consider myself a progressive populist. Early career included running communications for 35 campaigns. Have formed and led committees dealing with voter mobilization and precinct organizing, counter voter suppression and strategy.Co-founded the Progressive Populist Caucus of the Texas Democratic Party. Have served on the Texas Democratic Party Platform Committee numerous times. Also an active organizer for the anti-war movement since Vietnam and was active in the civil rights movement.